ShareThisDURHAM, N.C. - Three federal safety inspectors were standing in the dark just after 5 a.m. Thursday as a white Sky Express coach from New York City rolled to a stop. The skinny driver bounded down the steps.
"Are you ready to see my driver's license?" he asked. A few of his 51 passengers stepped from the bus and waited to retrieve their bags.
"Please," said officer Tim Switzer. "And your medical card, your log book and your registration. But go ahead and take care of your passengers first."
Switzer and five more inspectors from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration spent three hours quizzing drivers and looking for safety violations on six buses run by several companies.
They're part of the nation's growing fleet of charter coach companies and so-called "curbside" bus lines. They carried nearly 200 riders, who had paid $30 to $50 for a trip from New York to destinations such as Durham, Greensboro and Raleigh.
The inspection team was part of a nationwide safety effort launched Thursday by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
LaHood announced new standards and proposed rules to protect passengers from unsafe buses and drivers who are impaired, fatigued or poorly trained. He cited the deaths of 15 people in the March 12 crash of a charter bus returning to New York's Chinatown from an overnight casino trip.
"The public deserves to know that when they board any type of bus or commercial vehicle, they will be delivered to their destination safely," LaHood said at a press conference in Washington.
Tour buses transport over 700 million passengers a year, nearly as many as U.S. airlines. But current regulations allow them to go into business and operate for as long as 18 months without a safety evaluation, said Jackie Gillan, vice president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a Washington-based nonprofit.
In Durham, a second coach rolled into a shopping center parking lot across the street. It carried a temporary Pennsylvania registration slip on the windshield, a mislabeled "DISEL" fuel cap, and a company name unfamiliar to the federal officers.
The driver flunked a simple English proficiency test administered in the parking lot.
"What are you hauling today?" Switzer asked him.
"You ask me, 'How long?' " the driver replied, frowning in frustration.
A passenger volunteered to interpret for the federal officers. The driver sat behind the wheel as he translated their instructions into Cantonese: Turn the wheel left. Turn on your right signal.
Chris M. Hartley, who oversees motor carrier safety operations in North Carolina, and a State Highway Patrol trooper checked online databases and found no record that the bus had ever been inspected. But the driver had been "placed out of service" by inspectors twice before, in other states -- barred from continuing to drive because his poor English skills were deemed a safety hazard.
Hartley's inspectors pulled the driver off the road again Thursday, and the bus waited for the coach company to deliver a replacement driver.
The first Sky Express bus was cited for a simple mechanical problem -- corroded battery terminals, which could cause a deadly engine fire. Its young driver was pulled from service because he could not produce a full logbook to show that he had not driven more than 10 hours at a time during the past week.
David Wong, a manager for Sky Express of Charlotte, N.C., bickered with an impatient passenger. "You're making me late getting to Raleigh," the woman said.
Wong emptied the white coach and divided its passengers into two buses with two new drivers -- one bound for Charlotte and one for Columbia, S.C.
Out of eight buses they inspected early Thursday in Durham and Fayetteville, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration officers pulled four drivers out of service and sidelined one bus, the white Sky Express coach, for mechanical problems.
At the bus safety agency website, www.fmcsa.dot.gov, LaHood announced new measures including a database that lets consumers check bus company safety records. The listing for Sky Express, which has 31 coaches, gives the company below-average marks for unsafe driving, fatigued driving and driver fitness.
(Contact Bruce Siceloff at bruce.siceloff(at)newsobserver.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C.
